Your Comments: Would government consolidation actually save money?

A story about a possible new split of sales taxes in Onondaga County has commenters on syracuse.com talking about consolidation. Commenter bellbell suggests we could save more money by downsizing county and state government, rather than local government:

I would suggest that maybe it's time to look at the waste at the larger levels of government and think about downsizing them. Most Towns and Villages offer greater levels of service and at far better cost. Budgets are better managed and the people are closer to elected officials that have a greater effect on their daily lives than any elected official associated with larger levels of government. This country was founded on the principle of small government. All big government wants is to take all of our tax money and spent it on what every they want too and gives us no say, something that doesn't occur at lower levels of government. Time to stop this scam. My tax bill will never be lower unless we get a grip on all these social mandated programs, all that will happen is my tax dollars will be shifted to another level of government and I will have less control if any at all about how it is spent and what services I receive. Leave the Towns and Villages alone and start to downsize the waste at the County and State. We all just experienced the embarassment last year regarding the efficiency at the State level. What did that cost the tax payers, so a handful of crooks could gain more power, time for us of to smarten up.